Today’s New York Times features an article on how Jack Grubman, former telcom/dotcom analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, wrote a script for Worldcom’s Bernie Ebbers as he denied the company’s financial troubles before an audience of increasingly skeptical analysts. Inspired, our investigative team tracked down Grubman to get the rest of the story.

“Sure”, said the newly reclusive Grubman, “I helped him [Ebbers] talk the talk, even helped him walk the walk. You don’t know the half of it. You honestly think these CEO’s could have justified the stock values we [analysts] promoted without our help? They were operating on the razor’s edge of creditability as it was – spending all their time inside, buying off CFO’s and auditors, and arranging for huge personal loans from the company. It was my job to act as their ‘Mr. Outside’.”

Grubman went onto to state that the costs of sending his children to a posh Manhattan nursery school forced him into moonlighting for a number of CEO’s like Ebbers. “I admit that some of the people who got greedy and rode the stocks of these companies a bit too long got screwed. But hey, it’s their own fault -- if they still believed me, the stock wouldn’t have cratered. And me, my employer and my clients did fine, thank you very much, so what's not to like?”

When asked about his career plans now, Grubman replied. “Well, I’ve got my hands full beating back regulators at the moment, but I’m already working on the next big thing. All these Wall Street fines that are being paid? The money’s got to be invested somewhere. I’m going to offer my services to those guys. I’ve got some great new hot stocks to kite, and you can make a lot of money on them in the short term.”